I had a beaver sighting a couple of weeks ago. It was the evening after a series of huge storms came though, leaving our yard looking like this. I walked the dogs to the beaver pond at dusk and there was a beaver sitting on a felled tree right above the creek. He knew I was there before I knew he was there and fortunately the dogs never knew he was there. While I watched he slipped very quietly into the water on the far side of the tree and made almost no ripple. That was it. It made me happy though.
Since the last post I wrote was dedicated to the losses of Chiquita and Buck, I am quite behind on what has been happening in my world. So maple syrup season has ended. It was a very poor season for us, with only about 2 gallons of finished syrup produced. And the second gallon has an odd flavor, which I don't find very pleasing. I think it was too warm and the trees were probably starting to bud and I have heard that that will affect the flavor. So we will have no syrup for sale this year, sadly. Hopefully next year will be better.
Grover and I attended 1 day of our club's March trial in Zanesville. We had a family event for the second day of the trial which took precedence, so we had to pass on Sunday. Saturday was a great day for us though. We got our first Q in Premier Standard, which requires more difficult handling skills than Masters Standard. It was only our second time running this class and I was quite happy we Q'd. It is always the first class in the morning and to be honest, I have been signing up for it to use it as a warm-up run since it does not qualify for our Double Q's needed for a MACH. I know, complicated. So we Q'd in that, then we no Q'd in Master's Standard (of course that's the one that counts toward our Double Q!) and then we also Q'd in Masters Jumpers. So we got 2 Q's out of 3. Not a bad day at all. Grover and I will be attending a trial in Columbus on April 7 & 8. A new venue for us. And then our club's final trial of the "season" in Zanesville is April 21, 22 & 23.
While spring is here and with it, daylight savings time, it really hasn't been nice enough to do a lot outside. There is a lot to do. I have to clean all the sap buckets and taps and tubing and store away. There is a mess in the yard left from the flooding a couple of weeks ago and all my agility stuff needs to be gotten out and set back up and ready for practice. At this time of year it seems everywhere I look on the farm there is something that needs to be done and I get anxious to get at it. And the long days of being outside will be here soon, but for now, I am taking advantage of the weather to get some inside stuff done. I just took 4 towels off my small loom. They are all one color warp and then each one has a different color weft. I also finished weaving and sewing some linen bread bags and I finished the hems on 2 rugs I took off the big loom a couple of weeks ago or more.
I had dyed the orange and red rug yarn for the orange striped rug and I was so pleased with how it came out that I decided to do a similar rug for my weaving studio. It will be larger, about 3.5' X 6' when finished, which is as wide as I can weave on my loom. It will use natural white and black alpaca rug yarn and will be striped with turquoise and purple, to match my studio, which I have also painted in the last week.
I plan to paint the trim purple and there are 2 walls in the turquoise and 2 in the butternut squash yellow color. I first dyed my purple yarn, which came out a little darker than I wanted it to, but it will be fine. I need half as much of it as I do the turquoise and I am very pleased with how the turquoise came out.
This was no small dyeing feat as I had to dye 4 skeins of this turquoise and each skein was almost a pound and 40 yards. Each skein needed to be dyed separately to allow for plenty of room in the dyepot, so I had to be very careful with my measurements and process to be sure they all came out the same color, which meant taking good notes. I think I did a pretty good job. I only had to dye 2 skeins of the purple. I have 2 dyepots that are big enough to handle this job, so I did 2 at a time. It is a long process, requiring most of a day from start to finish, though a lot of that time is just allowing the pots to come up to temperature and then cool down at the end. And of course I end up with dye everywhere, though I try to be very careful. I am glad this job is done! Now for the weaving. Once the loom is warped, it should go pretty quickly.
This will be a very different spring for us this year. Shearing used to be a huge chore every spring, requiring days of work. There were years we sheared more than 50 alpacas, and sometimes with no outside help, though we have had a lot of that over the years. We would spread the job over several days and weeks and it was always so satisfying to throw those very last fleeces into the shed and clean the barn up for the final time. It was hard dirty, sweaty, smelly work, but it was just part of our life as alpaca breeders. Last year, we sheared only 5 alpacas and this year it will be only 3. Sam says he wants to get them all done in one day. I think we can manage. And I lost my last hive of bees and I do not plan to get anymore. I have come to the conclusion that while I like the bees, I just am not dedicated enough to do everything that really needs to be done to keep them healthy. I like to hope that I have contributed to the population of wild honeybees with swarms from my hives over the last several years.
So this spring, I will once again concentrate my efforts on the garden. Our garden did so well last year and I hope to make it a success again this year. And of course there will be hiking in the woods and dog agility and afternoons at the pond. And mowing and making hay and all those things that make life on the farm so incredibly enjoyable and rewarding for me. Bring it on!
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